1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to digital modeling, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for updating and synchronizing digital models based on real world data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Ninety percent (90%) of plant engineering projects are done on existing “brownfield” plants. Brownfield plants are existing operating facilities that undergo continuous improvement, repair and reconfiguration throughout their lifetime. Many plant design projects now use 3D modeling techniques. Once a plant is built, the 3D model quickly becomes stale as the built plant is modified and reconfigured as needed but the corresponding 3D model is rarely maintained. Laser scanning to capture “as-built” information is becoming very popular but using this information to create accurate model updates requires significant manual guesswork and manipulation. Further, prior art practices for updating digital models are very labor intensive and rely primarily on manual interpretation of as-built data by a CAD (computer aided design) operator.
The person most familiar with the details and configuration of the plant project is the person in the plant who oversaw the installation of the new run of pipe or piece of steel. This person (maintenance lead, operations manager, mechanical lead, instrument technician, etc.) has an intimate knowledge of the plant but spends their days in the plant and rarely sits in front of a personal computer (PC), much less has the time/patience to do the tedious job of updating the as-built model in a CAD application. There exists a need to get information about how a plant was actually constructed or modified back into the 3D model and engineering drawings. This method has to be easy for someone in the field to accomplish and should not require knowledge of a complex CAD program. Such problems may be better understood with a description of digital models and construction.
When building process plants (or other facilities and/or objects), a design may be constrained based on materials. Further, with the improvements in technology, many professional designers/architects/contractors/etc. desire to integrate the digital world with the physical world and the actual building/objects constructed based on or reflected in digital models. Once a building/object is constructed, the building/object is continuously changing (e.g., adding a new valve, updating to accommodate new safety regulations, etc.). Further, persons performing the actual construction/building are often not proficient with modeling programs such as a CAD or solid modeling application. However, such persons are the most knowledgeable about the changes in the resulting construction (e.g., what was cut, the material used, if something was changed to enable it to work). Such changes need to be reflected in the digital model. The problem with updating such designs is that the field technician cannot be expected to input the changes/modifications in the CAD application and similarly, a proficient CAD operator cannot be expected to perform the actual building/construction nor physically visit the plant to confirm the as-built state.
In summary of the above, communication between an engineer/architect or a designer/drafter that is working with digital design documents/data, and a contractor or field technician that is dealing with physical manifestation of those designs can be time-consuming, cumbersome and error-prone due to disjointed workflow that is currently followed and the heterogeneous tools/interfaces available to each role. While a typical engineer is using a technical drawing, such as a CAD drawing, to communicate his design, a technician is looking at a physical object or unassembled parts. Translation between these two views of the world does exist, but it often introduces ambiguities and misunderstandings due to the lack of an effective multi-way communication between the two views—digital and physical.
Examples of Such Prior Art Problems Include:
A CAD drawing created by an engineer/designer/architect can be difficult to understand by a general contractor, and the real-world view of a general contractor cannot be easily translated back into the CAD drawing; and
A mechanical CAD drawing created by a mechanical engineer can be difficult to understand by a repair technician. In this regard, a technician often needs to talk to the engineer to resolve any ambiguity about the fitting and construction of the machine.
Another example of prior art limitations exists with respect to augmented reality applications. Augmented reality is the ability to overlay digital content (e.g., text, images, video, 3D objects, etc.) on a live video feed of the real world in real-time and in the case of 3D objects, at the correct parallax. In the prior art, expensive hardware along with sensors and markers were used to track a scene in real-time. With the confluence of smartphone technology (e.g., camera, global positioning system [GPS], compass, accelerometers, etc.), it is now more feasible to implement robust augmented reality applications on consumer smartphones such as Google™ phones, iPhones™, Symbian OS™ phones, and Android™ devices. For example, real-world information may be captured from cameras, video, laser scan, etc. It is desirable to overlay such reality captured information with digital information (e.g., using photogrammetry, special effects, etc.). In an augmented reality application, a 3D model may be overlayed with live video or image data to provide a synchronized view (e.g., a 3D piping model may be overlayed on a video of a building hallway to illustrate the piping in the ceiling panels).
Examples of augmented reality application may vary from visualizing/placing virtual furniture in a live video/image of a room using a portable device (e.g., iPhone™), to overlaying virtual information on images of an automobile to provide maintenance instructions, to providing a virtual x-ray vision, excavation, and asset markup, to performing scene recognition (e.g., an SREngine [scene recognition engine], to performing parallel tracking and mapping [PTAM])). New cellular/mobile devices (e.g., iPhone™, Droid™, etc.) have also enabled a significant number of augmented reality applications (e.g., car finder applications, sun seeker applications, pocket universe™ [an application to find astronomical constellations, or artificially created universes that may synch up with some real locations, etc.].
In view of the above, significant problems exist in the prior art with matching/synchronizing digital models to real-world projects and maintaining a two-way flow of information from digital to as-built and vice versa.